As to the dictionary, laymen's dictionaries are next to useless in technical discussions. Competent discussions of recombinance involving viruses should avoid at all costs any reference to bacteriological pathogens, en passant or otherwise. There is absolutely no need for or use in risking muddying the discussion by using the term 'plague' in a generic, as opposed to disease-specific, sense in such a discussion.
This sentiment applies with equal force to 'journalists' who write on technical matters, whether in a general-readership publication or not.
''No more need be said,'', eh? Fine, you can cease your defense of an indefensible botch any time.
1. Do you have any nifty explanations, perhaps even backed up by factual citations, for why Baxter International, Inc. mixed live, genetically engineered avian flu viruses in vaccine material shipped to 18 countries? A "mistake" that is virtually unknown in a bio-safety three facility with numerous key safety systems that would have had to be breached? Can you address with any real authority or experience the allegation: "It simply can’t be done without direction from the inside. They did not send out the wrong vial – they produced dozens of gallons of biological-weapon agent (genetically engineered live H5N1 / Bird flu virus), then sent it out as a “vaccine”."
Anything substantive to add to why Mr. Moshe, a microbiologist, was "gangbanged" by a brigade of cops after reporting that Baxter’s Ukrainian lab was in fact producing a bioweapon disguised as a vaccine. He claimed that the vaccine contained an adjuvant designed to weaken the immune system, and replicated RNA from the virus responsible for the 1918 pandemic Spanish flu, causing global sickness and mass death. Do you have any actual facts to illuminate this issue?
Or just personal put-downs of someone whose education, experience, motives and character you have not the least glimmer. If it's only the latter, I think most readers here understand your purpose. And honestly, we're much more interested in the two questions above, not your name-calling to distract from them.